Arnold Schwarzenegger - Total Recall - My Unbelievably True Life Story

By the time I got home, I told this as a funny story, but at the moment it happened, it stung. “What an asshole,” I thought. But I reminded myself right away, “Actually, this is good! This is one of those situations where someone dismisses you, and you come from behind and surprise the shit out of them.” I never argued with people who underestimated me. If the accent and the muscles and the movies made people think I was stupid, it worked to my advantage.

I didn’t sign any movie contracts that summer. If the governorship really became a possibility, this time I wanted to keep my options open. As the recall movement continued to gain momentum, I kept in touch with my advisors and broadcast to the public that I shared the sentiment behind it. “Our elected leaders will either act decisively, or we will act in their place,” I told the audience at a celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Proposition 13.

I didn’t exactly say I wanted to be governor, but I couldn’t resist leading off my remarks that night with a joke about Gray Davis. “This is really embarrassing,” I said. “I just forgot the name of our state governor. But I know that you will help me recall him.” It got a good laugh. I sent another smoke signal about running by telling the New York Post , “If the party needs me, I would without any doubt be interested in doing that rather than doing another movie. I would give up my movie career for that.”

Meanwhile, in trying to reduce the budget deficit, Governor Davis found a sure way to commit political suicide: he tripled the “car tax.” This was a fee Californians have to pay when they register their vehicles. Technically, he wasn’t raising the fee, just canceling an abatement, put in place by his predecessor, that was costing the state $4 billion a year in lost revenue. But Californians love their cars, and none of that mattered. The number of signatures being collected each week for the recall petition went through the roof.

Each time Gray Davis made another mistake, I was boiling. What was he doing giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants? Why was he increasing fees rather than pushing back on pensions? Why had he taken campaign money from Indian tribes that owned casinos? Why were we running out of electricity? Why would he sponsor job-killing legislation that would force businesses to flee the state?

I thought about what I’d do: cut taxes, end driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, cut the vehicle license fee. Spend no more than the state is taking in. Rebuild California. Find alternatives to fossil fuels. Make the Indian gaming tribes pay their fair share of taxes. Stop the whole system of money in, favors out. And bring business back to California.

I also had a personal beef with the guy. I’d asked him five times what he wanted from the Governor’s Council on Fitness. He never replied.

I began to despise everything about Gray Davis. When I saw his picture in the newspaper, I didn’t see the picture, I saw a monster. I had a plan. I visualized myself taking him down. (Oddly enough, later, when we met after I became governor, we became friends. I realized it was hard for any governor to make the changes that were needed. Gray Davis couldn’t do it by himself. No one could.)

But I had to ask myself, Why did I want to step into this mess? Why not just stay an actor? The state was staring at a deficit that had grown to $37.5 billion, businesses were moving away, the lights couldn’t stay on, the courts were ordering prisons to release inmates due to overcrowding, the political system was rigged for the incumbents, the spending was locked in by formulas, and no one ever seemed to fix the schools.

But I love it when people say that something can’t be done. That’s when I really get motivated; I like to prove them wrong. And I liked the idea of working on something bigger than me. My father-in-law always talked about how it gives you extra power and energy, but you don’t really feel it until you’re in the middle of it. Plus, I was going to be the governor of California! It is the place where everyone in the world wants to go. You never hear anyone from abroad say, “Oh, I love America! I can’t wait to get to Iowa!” Or “Gosh, can you tell me about Utah?” Or “I hear Delaware is a great place.” California was wrapped in problems, but it was also heaven.

It wasn’t too early to be thinking about a campaign strategy, and I’d begun to envision one that made sense. This was the subject of long, private discussions with Don Sipple, the top media consultant for our after-school campaign. It was essential, we agreed, not to jump in too soon; better to wait until a recall election was formally qualified and scheduled. Don crystallized our approach in a fax called “Some Thoughts,” which he sent me at the end of June 2003.

If I did jump in, my campaign would have to be truly unique, because I was a nonpolitician responding to a populist revolt. We needed to avoid trying to win over the press and instead play to the people. When I went on TV, I’d go on entertaining national shows like Jay Leno, Oprah, David Letterman, Larry King, and Chris Matthews rather than wonky local broadcasts. And then, just as the media decided my candidacy was lightweight, we’d surprise them with speeches that went deep on key issues like education, health care, and public safety. Above all, the campaign had to be big . I was all about leadership and major projects and reforms that could attract massive public support.

I especially liked the way Don channeled my message: “There is a disconnect between the people of California and the politicians of California. We the people are doing our job: work hard, pay taxes, raise our families. The politicians are not doing their job. They fiddle, they fumble, and they fail. Governor Davis has failed the people of California, and it is time to replace him.” These words resonated more strongly than any movie script I’d ever read. I memorized them and made them a kind of mantra.

I shifted gears to promote Terminator 3. It opened across the country on Wednesday, July 2, and became America’s top movie for the Fourth of July weekend. But by then I was half a world away. After the premiere in LA, I flew to Tokyo for the Japanese premiere, and then on to Kuwait. And on July 4, three months after US-led coalition forces had seized Baghdad, I was in the Iraqi capital showing Terminator 3 and entertaining the troops at a former palace of the toppled dictator Saddam Hussein.

I opened, as I always do, with a joke. “It is really wild driving around here,” I told them. “I mean, the poverty, and you see there is no money, it is disastrous financially, and there is the leadership vacuum—pretty much like in California right now.”

From Baghdad, I flew from one Iraqi city to the next and then worked my way back west making appearances across Europe. Then I made promotional trips to Canada and Mexico. During all this, I didn’t even think about running for governor; I stored it in the back of my mind but wasn’t consciously making plans.

On July 23, the last day of my trip, I was in Mexico City when it was announced that the California recall election would go forward. Over 1.3 million voters had signed the petition, almost 500,000 more than were needed. The following day, the special election was scheduled for the first Tuesday in October 2003, less than three months away. Candidates had barely two weeks—until Saturday, August 9—to declare.

The quick deadline didn’t deter people from jumping into the race. Because of the low entry barrier, the recall was a magnet for dozens of fringe candidates, attention seekers, and people who just wanted an interesting item for their résumé. Eventually the ballot listed 135 candidates. We had a porn queen and a porn publisher. We had a bounty hunter, an American Communist, an actress whose main claim to fame was advertising herself on billboards around LA, and a female swing dancer who had also run several times for president. Gary Coleman, the former child star, jumped in. So did author and political pundit Arianna Huffington, who would become my foil in the debate before dropping out. There was an antismoking crusader and a sumo wrestler.